Despite some of the bad press resulting from the state’s “C-minus” in the Government Performance Project’s latest management survey of all state governments, Illinois appeared to be praised more often than it was criticized.

You can see the complete Illinois study here, or you can just peruse the press release here.

In the end, whether you see Illinois management as a glass half full or a glass half empty doesnâ€™t matter a great deal. The bottom line is that thereâ€™s an enormous amount of catching up to doâ€”but at least now thereâ€™s somebody checking to see that the glass doesnâ€™t fall off the table.

And some basic facts:

The state takes longer than average to hire new employees and terminates an above average number of new workers before the end of their probationary period. Despite recent high retirement turnover, the state boasts comparatively low voluntary turnover. Illinois spends an average amount of money on benefits per salary dollar for employees, including a 19 percent contribution of employee salary to retirement and payment of 90 percent of an employeeâ€™s health insurance costs.

* 51,127 state employees (excluding temps) * 20% of employees are covered by the merit system * 45 political appointees serve in the Executive Branch * 80% of state employees are covered by labor contracts […]

* There were 1,211 grievances for state employees * There were 23.7 grievances per 1,000 state employees * There were 110 appeals for state employees * There were 2.2 appeals per 1,000 state employees * There were 138 discrimination charges for state employees * There were 2.7 discrimination charges per 1,000 state employees

There’s more, and I’m sure other reporters and bloggers will dig it up. I’ll keep looking as well.

Looks like the media really got Blago on this one. And completely unmerited, it appears to me. The report notes the awful fiscal crisis that is little fault of the current gov., and plenty of fault to the previous gov’s.

Blago deserves credit where credit is due. Its too bad the Chicago media can’t look past their blatant editorial slants to praise the governor for the cost savings acheived and inefficiencies eliminated that we’ve seen from his administration.

You’re commending this Governor for getting rid of inefficiencies…Gee what do you mean..like the inefficient gaming board….like failing to fill the ethics commission in a timely fashion…if these are the types of failuers that you think of as worthy of praise then –God help us all….

As a state employee, I see things from an internal perspective. I (and a lot of my fellow workers) agree with some of the things the administration is trying to achieve. We don’t have a problem with being more accountable…but we want to be rewarded when we go beyond the norm in delivering what is asked of us. We don’t like the infiltration of unqualified party hacks into administrative positions, although this has been going on thru previous administrations. And we could achieve and better our goals a lot easier if there was more clear direction from the top. It’s been a somewhat clueless 2 years in some respects, with off-the-cuff policy decisions and unwritten rules. Ready, fire, aim, oops. And some excellent management people have been terminated or forced out, leaving a brain drain, and they really weren’t “political people” per se, but they must have violated one of those unwritten rules or got on the bad side of a hack. Of course, Brad Tusk, Lon Monk and John Filan do not see this as a problem…but they will be long gone when we’re still working and trying to pick up the pieces.